Lighting Visualizers
While this article is not intended to favor one piece of software over another, it’s hard to deny the impact that Cast Software’s wysiwyg has made on the lighting design industry. This visualizer is actually a complete design package that contains CAD functionality for design, rendering functionality for quickly rendering design concepts, paperwork functionality for tracking all of the important fixture info and all other data needed to bring a design into reality, and of course, the Live control mode, which allows the visualizer to be connected to a lighting console so that the designer can pre-program a show before walking into a rehearsal. There are not many things that wysiwyg cannot do, and it remains a very useful tool for both designing and pre-programming the lighting and, to some degree, the video elements in a show.
Wysiwyg’s latest release, R33, has more functionality then ever, but several strong competitors in the “lighting, video, DMX controllable, pre-programming visualizer” market have emerged as well. Again, not to slight any of the lesser-known applications that may be available worldwide, these are a few of the ones commonly used in the U.S.:
Zzyzx, Inc.’s ESP Vision is a solid visualizer that, when packaged together with Nemetschek’s Vectorworks Spotlight for CAD and John McKernon Software’s Lightwright for paperwork, offer all of the same types of tools needed for a lighting designer to pre-program a show.
Still a relatively new kid on the block in the U.S., Light Converse Ltd.’s LightConverse has extremely high-resolution graphics capabilities with enough of the basic design features needed to create a lighting plot. While it may not have the same functionality of paperwork and reports as that of wysiwyg or Lightwright, its strength lies in its graphics and rendering capabilities.
Let me make one last point about these DMX controllable lighting design/programming tools: wysiwyg, ESP Vision and LightConverse allow for live streaming video and/or thumbnails via CITP or other type of video over Ethernet protocol when connected to a media server. Media, on the other hand, is not stored directly on the same computer but is transmitted instead between a media server and the application via an Ethernet network.
Visualizer Evolution
While these applications have been used for years by lighting designers and programmers for designing and pre-programming shows, it’s time to introduce a new application for the word visualizer. For lighting folks, to pre-viz a show means literally to hook up a lighting console to a visualizer via DMX or Art-Net and then program the show using the virtual reality world created in the software in place of hanging the entire rig in a warehouse. For video designers, however, a visualizer means something a little different.
Until a couple of years ago, video designers were, for the most part, on their own for design and pre-programming applications. Since many video designers use programs like 3D Studio Max (AutoDesk) or Cinema4D (Maxon), they most likely created the content for the show in these applications and then used these same applications to render the look of a production for a client. Since most of these content creation applications don’t allow for internal media management or external playback control, they are useful for conceptual renderings but not practical as pre-programming tools. Therefore, once the content has been created, it would need to be loaded into a media server where it could be queued for playback via a cuelist or timeline function within the server.
This lack of a single source for video design, management and playback has thankfully changed, and now video designers have some very powerful pre-visualization/media server hybrid packages. Two of these, the d3 (d3 Technologies) and Ai (Avolites Media), offer the same levels of design and pre-visualization control to video directors that wysiwyg, ESP Vision and LightConverse offer to lighting designers. These proprietary hardware/software servers offer the video designer the ability to lay out all projection details needed, including angles, throw distances and lens options, while also storing the content and the timeline or cuelist for playback as well as allowing for external control (like DMX or Art-Net).
Now, back to part two of the original question. Which one do you choose? That’s not an easy question to answer, and it’s going to depend on your role in the show. While wysiwyg, ESP Vision and LightConverse do allow for video input into the virtual world, the media is not stored on the machine and requires the media server to be present for playback. These lighting oriented visualizers also do not allow for the precise projection information provided by a d3 Technologies or Avolites Media Ai server, so they may not make the best choice for calculating the details of the video elements of a show.
On the other hand, the d3 and the Ai are not intended to replace lighting pre-viz applications either. While both do contain a library of lighting fixtures that can be patched into the virtual world, their primary purpose for being included is for laying out any pixel mapping elements in the show. So, these media server/visualizers currently cannot replace the lighting visualizers for pre-programming a show.
But don’t fret. Conceptually, you could use them together. For instance, the Ai could easily be connected to wysiwyg and controlled via DMX, and then the video image would become an input mapped onto a surface within wysiwyg using CITP. However, at the moment, lighting visualizers do lighting well while video visualizers handle video well, and there is a lot of gray area in between.
Inevitably, an all-in-one application will evolve that will allow for both the design and live programming of lighting as well as the design and media management of a media server. Until then, just make sure to specify the correct type of visualizer that fits your application. And if you need both, then add an extra Cat5e cable and a few extra monitors to your pre-viz suite. It won’t be that much extra work.
